We appreciate the enormous support that our ABestWeb community has experienced over the many years it has served its members and sponsors. We have decided to exit this business and have placed the property up for sale and we are actively entertaining interest.

In the meantime, community members will be able to read but not post to ABestWeb beginning on Jan. 18.

We want to thank you for your numerous contributions and your ongoing support. If you have any questions, please let us know.

I just sent the following message to Linkshare Support through the contact form on their website. Because I was logged in at the time, the form was pre-populated with some of my login info. For the subject of the message, I said "Category Industry."

Please change Radisson from Food and Drink to Travel.

A few minutes later, I received the following autoresponder by email...enough to give me a headache!

What I want to know is will my message be seen by Linkshare if I do not respond to their autoresponder at the email address provided at the end of it.

In order to expedite your LinkShare Customer Support request, we are including answers to commonly asked questions. Please see the list below for your question, and then scroll down to the appropriate response.
1. I forgot my username / I forgot my password / I forgot my secret question
2. How can I create links to merchant sites
3. I see a Legal Message when I access my account
4. I cannot get to the login page / I see a blank login page / I get an
error message asking me to adjust my security setting

If you forgot your security question or answer, please provide us below requested information at the email address provided at the bottom of this email (if you reply to this email, it will go to an automated mailbox):
- LinkShare Username
- First 4 digits of SS# or tax id (whichever you used to register at
LinkShare)
- Zip Code registered with LinkShare

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#2. How do I create Links?

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In order to arrive at your "Create Links" section, log in to your
LinkShare account at http://www.linkshare.com using your username and
password.

Click on the "Create Links" tab. You will see all the
Merchants you’ve been approved by in the box. Click on the Merchant name to
begin.

Be sure you have selected the appropriate network and channel
from the dropdown boxes at the top of the Affiliate Interface, and then choose the merchant that you’d like
to work with.

The Create Links page for that Merchant will load. Select
a link type by clicking on the words in the left hand panel under the
heading "Available Link Types." Choices include Textual/email,
Individual Product, and Banner/Image links. Clicking on a type of link
will show you all the available creative of that type for the Merchant.

If the response above did not address your question, please write to the email address provided at the bottom of this email.

You are getting the legal message due to a back-end issue that has no
bearing on your account. Our third-party database cannot verify certain
pieces of information in your profile, but it does not mean that the
information is inaccurate or that your account information is
incomplete.

You will continue to be paid whether or not LinkShare is able to
validate your registration information. As long as the information you
have entered is correct and up to date, you do not need to take any
further steps.

If the above response did not address your question, please write to the email address provided at the bottom of this email.

If you are having problems logging into LinkShare, please try one of the
following instructions depending on the Internet browser you are using:

-- Settings for Internet Explorer 6 and newer versions for a PC
Allowing cookies
1) Click on TOOLS in your menu bar
2) Click Internet Options
3) Click the Privacy tab
4) In the Privacy section at the top, move the bar to Medium
If you have XP Service Pack 2, the section will say Settings
5) In the Settings section toward the bottom, select the Web Sites
button
If you have XP Service Pack 2, the section will say Pop-up Blocker
6) In XP Service Pack 2, select the Pop-up Blocker checkbox
7) Add linkshare.com and linksynergy.com in the Address of WebSite to
allow box
8) Click ADD
9) Click Close

Clearing Cache
1) Click on TOOLS in your menu bar
2) Click Internet Options
3) Click the General tab
4) Under Temporary Internet Files
In IE7, under Browsing History
5) Click Delete Files (This may take time if you have never done it)
In IE7, click Delete, then Delete Files under Temporary Internet files
6) Click Ok
You may want to exit all the way out of the browser and then re-open
the browser before attempting to access LinkShare.com again

Clearing Cache
1) Go to TOOLS
2) Click Privacy Icon
3) Click on CACHE tab
4) Click on the CLEAR CACHE button
5) Click OK to exit out of the prompt.
You may want to exit all the way out of the browser and then re-open
the browser before attempting to access LinkShare.com again

Clearing Cache
1) Click on TOOLS
2) Click on Options
3) Click on Privacy
4) Select Cache
5) Click Clear
6) Click OK
You may want to exit all the way out of the browser and then re-open
the browser before attempting to access LinkShare.com again

Clearing Cache
1) Click Security
2) Click Select Footprints to Clear
3) under Browser Cache, click Clear
4) Click close
You may want to exit all the way out of the browser and then re-open
the browser before attempting to access LinkShare.com again

--Safari
Allowing Cookies
1) Open Safari ®.
2) Click on Safari from the top menu bar.
3) Click on Preferences.
4) Click on the Security icon in the navigation bar.
5) Beside the option titled Accept Cookies , verify that the Only from
sites you navigate to option is checked.
6) Close the window to save your changes.

Spybot Search and Destroy
1) Click on "settings" in the lower left hand corner
2) Choose "ignore products"
3) When the screen appears click the "All Products"
tab
4) Scroll down and check the box for LinkSynergy...
5) Click the "Cookies" tab and scroll down and check the box for
LinkSynergy

If the above response does not address your question, please write to the email address provided below

----------------------------------------------
Please write to r2r1@support.linkshare.com if this response has not
answered your questions

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I had to write back that none of their FAQ had anything to do with what I was writing about, and then they did respond to the second email I sent after the initial contact form.

On the other hand, in order to avoid getting their canned answer everytime you contact them, you have the direct address to write to, and can skip the first step in the process in the future.

And on the bright side, you've given it to everybody here, so they can skip the nonsense, as well.

It's amazing how many hoops you have to jump through at Linkshare. They must have somebody on the payroll whose only responsibility is to figure out how to make things happen in as many steps as possible.

Ranae, shouldn't there be a form for submission of support requests that's routed to the correct recipient? If a proper selection were instituted and kept up to date, it would give an efficient system for routing to the appropriate parties at any given time.

May I suggest that the message be modified to indicate that unless you email the address provided, the original message will not be seen?

As you see, my original message wasn't a question that called for a response. It called for action to be taken. The time Linkshare is asking me to deal with this new convoluted contact system is greater than the time it would take to do what I asked.

It looks like all that is necessary for the initial contact through the form is just to type a single character that will generate an auto-response since the initial message is never seen on Linkshare's end.